New Yorkers pay a hefty price for a secret budget

Sunday

Mar 29, 2009 at 2:00 AM

In response to the continuing decline in state tax revenues, Gov. Paterson this week announced that he would be ordering a layoff of 8,900 workers. He did so after unions representing state employees declined his request that they consider some concessions about pay or benefits. The governor's budget director estimated that the layoffs would save $500 million over two years.

In response to the continuing decline in state tax revenues, Gov. Paterson this week announced that he would be ordering a layoff of 8,900 workers. He did so after unions representing state employees declined his request that they consider some concessions about pay or benefits. The governor's budget director estimated that the layoffs would save $500 million over two years.

As with most news seeping through the closed doors in Albany these days, the alleged savings are good only if they do not get a closer look, the kind of scrutiny that has been rare in recent decades and has disappeared this year with Democrats in control of pretty much everything.

Earlier in the month, the Buffalo News did some math of its own and calculated that despite what the governor announced as a hiring freeze last year, the state has added more than 8,000 people to the public payroll since October. And that comes on top of the more than 31,000 people hired during a three-month hiring freeze the News examined last year.

Nobody expected a job freeze to mean the state would not fill any jobs. Sometimes the government has to hire to fill a crucial position when a worker retires or leaves for some other employer. But it is hard to understand how the state can hire that many people during a time when every position was supposed to be scrutinized and only the essential ones would be filled.

But there's more.

As the News also reported, the state Power Authority is pushing to raise electric rates for millions of customers upstate to make up for the $500 million it sent to the state just a month ago as a donation toward balancing the budget, an amount that was not supposed to have any effect on rates. And this rate hike could take effect at the same time that the authority is considering just how big the bonuses should be for its 1,500 employees.

All the while, in a government noted for secrecy, the Democrats in charge of the Senate and Assembly have conspired — there is no better word — with the governor to create a budget that will be unleashed on the state with no warning and no debate.

With just a few days to go before the April 1 budget deadline, New Yorkers know less about the state's taxing and spending plans than they ever have. And this comes at a time when the state is facing the biggest short-term and long-term financial challenge in its history.

The immediate problem is a growing multibillion-dollar deficit for the next fiscal year. The continuing problem is the permanent downsizing of the financial industry in New York City, taking with it much of the money that allowed legislators to avoid making any tough spending decisions.

New York is faced with the need to help more people at the same time it has fewer people able to fund the continuing needs, let alone the growing new ones that will not go away anytime soon.

If ever there was a time for open government, now is it. This is the price we pay for giving three men in a room dictatorial control.